


Atlanto-Axial

by Graysworks



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU, Angst and fluff and humor, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, New Beginnings, Slow Burn, and about finding family, bed sharing but not really, keith's last name is kogane for simplicity, literally the entirety of s1 and s2 but with a twist, mutual thirsting.., ongoing, this is about growing from the past+ finding purpose
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-04-27 15:48:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14428932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Graysworks/pseuds/Graysworks
Summary: Takashi Shirogane may be a champion of arenas and souls, Atlas holding the sky precariously on his shoulders, but Keith Kogane is the axis around which he balances.(aka Voltron without the preexisting sheith)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> basically what the summary says but also I apologize for my inability to title fic... this was completely and unapologetically inspired by [Atlas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URKSDWOPkQI) by Shannon Saunders and also [Heart of Blue](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkhgfPbqBtw)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god okay so while editing, the italic tags got lost somewhere and I'm not going back to fix them due to laziness, but here we go. final round of writing-style-revamp, hopefully. the formatting reads MUCH nicer now, so there's that~

He doesn't talk to the team on the principle of it. Two days into -whatever this is- saving the universe, forming a giant robot comprised of several, smaller robots in an effort to defend Earth from an alien species, Keith settles into the change like a warm armchair and adjusts. He's never been the most social, an issue caused primarily by stilted communication and flustered silence and which usually means being forced into close proximity with a gaggle of teenagers won’t make much of a difference, although some chiding voice reminds him later that it’s exactly what he is, also. Keith doesn't talk to the team, on principle, but that doesn't stop them from talking to him.

"-and then he was like, 'they call me the tailor, because of how I thread the needle!' and then, this is the funny part- he slams our right wing into the sim landscape! Priceless!"

(Hunk, the friendly one with motion sickness is the prime example. He loves to talk.)

"Hey!" Lance, cargo-pilot blast from the past reddens and throws an offended hand out. "They threw us into that one blind, okay, it's not like the sim was meant to be fair!"

A startled laugh escapes Keith. Their shortest companion shoots an amused look his way, and he rubs at his offending grin. "You say that like any of them are.”

"Ugh, and why shouldn’t they be?"

"Variant conditions," Pidge answers, and swirls Nunvil around her glass distractedly. Keith hasn't quite deduced whether the rest of the group knows who she is at this point, save for Shiro, but nobody's asked and he's not about to out her in public as the Garrison’s worst hacking incident in recent history- or Matt Holt’s genius sibling for that matter. Lance says something else and she huffs again. “You know, outliers, deviation, that stuff? Not everything is going to be perfect on missions, right?"

"Well- yeah, I mean, that's basic knowledge," Hunk rolls his eyes. "Remember what Montgomery used to drone before field assignments? 'Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong'. Her faith in us was astounding."

"I'll drink to that," Lance scoffs, and promptly spits out the mouthful. All three of his audience laugh this time. "Yeah, yeah. So these variant whoevers are to blame, not my piloting. Besides, I'm not the one who threw up into the secondary engines generator, Hunk."

The taller cadet lifts a hand in disagreement. "Hey, don't pin this on me. Just because you couldn't keep the shuttle straight-"

"Our alignment devices were all out of wack! What, was I supposed to use my thumb or something?" Keith snickers into his drink while unfortunately forgetting about Lance's recent experience with the Nunvil, and twists his mouth around the bitter, watery substance that is objectively, disgusting. He inspects the color with a bit harsher of a squint as the group continues to argue around him, almost swears that it's changed color at least twice within the past five minutes.

"-your resources, I mean yeah, Lance, after you jerked the craft around so much that I fell over.”

"Well you were the one that unlocked the safety harness, smarta-"

Hunk clears his throat. "Uh, language dude. We're in the presence of an alien race- I think maybe we should try for a better impression." He slings an arm around Pidge's shoulders and jostles her drink. "Besides, Pidge is right! Missions aren't linear, something will always go wrong and when it does-"

“-a pilot has to be prepared for anything.” The sentence ends out of a newcomer's mouth. Their majority-appointed leader folds his arms over the black insignia of his armor, harsh castle lights throwing a sharp contrast over his scarred nose and shadows long past the severe lines of suit when he pauses, mouth lifting up at the edges. "Although I'm not sure any amount of Garrison protocol could prepare us for mingling with an alien species, I think following schedule and getting some sleep won't hurt. Come on guys, let’s hit the bunks for the night.” Pidge and Lance groan, the latter protesting about opportunities of a lifetime and basking in the heroism, but it barely lasts a minute before he yawns loud, unchecked, and admits a bit of exhaustion. (Even then his money is on the Nunvil- and he has no qualms in telling the others that.)

They go, and Keith strays away when they do, partly unwilling to confront the labyrinth of identical hallways leading to his room and partly loathe to leave the celebration. It’s loud, and- obnoxiously stuffy under even the high ceilings of the castle, but it’s adventure and so he leans back into the nearest column and wastes a few minutes just being in the moment. The solidity helps. Tapping his heel against metal, similarly, keeps his wits intact while Shiro levels an amused smile at him and shakes his head, and Keith shifts his gaze, and the insistent pressing throughout the past couple of days comes forefront to his mind. He understands the reason behind it- leading a team is bound to be difficult when only three of them are so well acquainted and there's an unspoken time limit on the new Paladins' learning curve, but his mouth goes dry when Shiro glances after said cadets and still stays, head tipped in some silent question he doesn’t parse out for a second.

"I’m- fine," he says, quiet. "Just not used to the crowd, you know, in space." It's a plausible excuse, with how many Arusians have been wandering in and out of the Castle during the early night, and it’s also likely the chaos will only grow from there. Shiro says nothing for a few beats; Keith’s mind jumps to wondering whether he’d said something wrong, but whatever went down on Kerberos hadn't exactly been free intel prior to Keith's expulsion, and he’d have no idea anyway. He’d nearly torn Keith’s shack apart upon waking after the rescue, so there’s that.

Shiro’s back hits the column beside his. “Hm. As opposed to being better used to the crowd... on earth? Not sure I buy it, Kogane.”

“Well, cheap excuses are easier to swallow anyway.”

He laughs, wryly. "Guess they are.”

They waste time there for what feels like the whole night, conversation lulling and coming back at times, never quite fixed on one topic for long and it’s strange to find himself enjoying it; stewing in the easiness of Shiro's company for a while, Keith tries not to notice but it’s a wonder to witness his laugh, nearly too subtle in its containment with all shaking shoulders and reddened ears and grins smudged into big, gloved hands. God. He seems to find the same delight in Keith's stammering as some of the wittier or offhand remarks, and something clicks tentatively underneath the companionship and the nunvil. Keith starts to realize that the Kerberos pilot is something else entirely from what he'd been expecting. He's not sure what he'd been expecting, truthfully, but surely not this- surely not for the man himself to take an interest in him, and it's almost enough to reconsider his stance on conversation with the team, Keith thinks, then suppresses a snort.

"Discipline issues," he answers, monotone in reciting the response when Shiro asks The Question, capital letters. "Apparently decking the guy that accused you of rigging the sim defaults is grounds for expulsion."

Shiro frowns. "Shouldn't be."

"It was. The guy was my C.O."

Something amused and suspicious crosses his face, eyes lit when they consider Keith. "Hedrick?"

"Hedrick," Keith confirms, slouching against the column. Shiro whistles, apparently impressed and Keith adds, "I'm getting the sense there was some bad blood there."

"I think you're more perceptive than you let on," Shiro agrees, something close to a tease in the observation, and Keith-

-Keith thinks he's screwed.

 

 

 

The thing with Shiro gets exponentially worse in the span of barely two days. Allura’s Castle takes damage from some of the surviving Galra, and the team disbands on the assumption that the Arusian village had been targeted only to find that it's not the case, too late. Keith paces while they wait for word from Pidge and glares a hole through the particle barrier like he can tear into it by sheer force of will alone. He can't, but it comes down eventually and the aftermath is like a douse of cold water.

Aftermath being- Shiro; cuffed and bruised and trying to throw down through a dozen injuries as if his body is nothing compared to the survival of the team, rage incarnate even on broken support. Keith's blood goes cold at the sight and it freezes to an icy slush when Sendak lands a hit, the Black Paladin goes down, and doesn’t move. Keith's blade clashes with metal, feet with armor and he doesn't hold back once Shiro's harsh a-ah of pain burns over his skin. Something clicked that night beside the staircase, something strange, and hopeful, but this is wild and fierce and oddly protective, screaming through the swing of his sword and the harsh impact where he kicks Sendak into the jut of a destabilizing crystal.

He takes a minute to heave in breath when it's all over, keyed up in a way he hasn't been for a long time. It takes even longer to cool down enough before he can survey how the others are doing; gaze going immediately to where Shiro is rolling to get up- but Pidge is already skidding to a halt beside him to help.

Keith clenches a shaking fist around his bayard and walks it off.

 

 

 

Lance remains behind a thin sheet of glass for several days, mobile even in sleep as he twitches and mutters under his breath. It's a point of debate as to what he's saying: Pidge claims it to be a subconscious stream of repressed inferiority complex, but Hunk swears up and down that he's done so since childhood and if that's the case, it's nothing new. Keith finds the speculation interesting only because there's nothing else to do. The training deck is a viable option, of course, but Shiro occupies the space more often than not during the day and Keith isn’t eager to get in the middle of that after recent developments.

The Arusians refuse to accept help in repairing the damages to their village, but Allura pushes everyone to visit on several occasions with the reasoning that it's the least they can do after drawing such a threat to their home planet. Keith agrees, even if it doesn't make the socializing aspect any easier, and he goes to bed dazed that night after parting ways with the others and receiving a half-hearted pat from Shiro as they break from the group.

"Everything okay?" he gathers the courage to ask, an odd mirror to nights before the attack. Shiro's prosthetic hand retracts on a hesitation that he doesn't voice.

"Yeah, fine." His knitted brow doesn't match the timbre of his voice across the space between them -is it smaller?- but Keith doesn't notice in the way Shiro's flesh hand replaces the absence on his shoulder, warm and encompassing and- oh no. "You did good today," Shiro says, and leaves him with a final, friendly squeeze and smile that feels too forced to be grateful for.

Later, it’s hard to bury that feeling down where it can’t make him do anything. Something as simple as another man's fingers curling securely around his shoulder; he dwells on it longer than he should in the dark with one arm crossed behind his head, trailing the other along his collar in an attempt to recreate that sensation, blankets shoved off while he waits for the air condition to kick in again. Allura warned them earlier that the rooms would run a bit stuffy for the night and had to explain something about internal systems being damaged in the Castle's attempted takeover, most of which went over Keith’s head the first time, but the takeaway was still that Sendak's attack had struck a bigger blow than they’d initially thought.

"Stop." And maybe in a way more than physical, he thinks, jerking forward as a muffled noise comes through the wall and something hits the other side with an indistinct thump before the air goes quiet again. His fingers curl instinctively at the thought of what it has to be- Shiro, undeniable even through blanket and sheet and inches of metal and Keith’s feet are halfway to the floor before he realizes what he’s doing. There's bile rising in the back of his throat. His palms have gone damp. He squeezes his eyes shut and worries it out- Don’t do it, don’t do it Kogane, you can’t help him, quickly like it’ll take away some of the sting, rip the bandaid off because it’s just a truth in his world that men like Shiro don’t need help, wouldn’t want it anyway and especially not from someone like Keith-

Another gasp and a thud come through the wall, weaker. Keith all but flings himself off the bed.

(Maybe that's where it all starts, really.)

 

 

 

Shiro mostly talks to the team on the principle of it, at least in the beginning. He crashes, quite literally, in their backyard and becomes their majority appointed leader within hours- and it makes him feel old in a way he shouldn't but the responsibility is a burden someone has to bear, so he falls into the rhythm like sand through an hourglass or a Lockheed ER-2 through several hundred miles of atmosphere, and settles into the pressure with as much grace as he remembers having at the Galaxy Garrison. Maybe it helps that he's been locked in a boss fight with death for a little over a year.

Maybe it's just some unspoken among the team that someone with that many scars understands their enemy best, though it’s not like they've seen. Shiro feels older with red smeared across his nose in a dull streak, older with white across his hair like bone bleached white in desert sun, older with the team more than he feels younger, but there's barely room for self-perception in this equation as it is. The cadets are undisciplined to say the least. They’re all talented but lack the group mind he's been conditioned to fly with since his first field assess at the Garrison, and it’s something they’ll have to get past if they want to form this team right so he goes through the list sometimes; Hunk's logicality and caution are essential to a fault and the only problem is that he's an engineer- not a pilot, and neither is Pidge even if her learning curve is practically nonexistent in its speed and the ability to problem solve makes up the rest. Lance may have been a spectacular cargo pilot before being promoted, but the universe doesn't need cargo pilots- it needs a weapon.

It needs Voltron, and people who know how to handle it. Shiro thinks that with time, these cadets will come to their own and form the team Coran and the Princess have envisioned, but they don’t exactly have time. They have enemies, and a lot of them, and it could be the beginning of the end before they've even begun- but Shiro starts to realize at a point that in his contemplation he always leaves out the outlier by force of habit. Keith is... an enigma, the exception to their rag-tag gaggle of heroes, a natural pilot, good with a blade, takes well to orders.

Oh no, Shiro thinks, once. The thought doesn’t go any deeper once he writes it off to anxiety about having an equal in leadership potential on the team, and still leading that team himself as it needs someone instinct-aware yet stable enough to lead the Paladins into battle, though it’s somehow not a comfort to realize that Keith fits every requirement. It could be a point of contention. Shiro's not sure their tentative dynamic will survive that so soon, but he has to put his fears to rest once coming to the conclusion that Keith doesn't want the Black Lion. He's- not quite sure what the pilot is here for- adventure? Obligation? Either way, he fades into the background, a trend which Shiro is fast noticing and considering, approaching the subject the same way he deals with his troubles, which is to say, not at all. He gravitates toward Keith within the few days they've known each other and just observes.

His self-control needs work. His social skills are rusty, at least. He has a heart of gold from what Shiro gathers and it's hard not to notice these things, especially after the Castle gets up and running again; Keith lays into Sendak with the wrath of god only to fall back from the scene once immediate danger is gone and the others are regrouping. Shiro has half a mind to pull him back, but he's holding onto his own cool by the fringes and neither of them could stand the interaction. It’s more for his own sake when he reaches out to him later, maybe seeking an ounce of usefulness after everything, though Keith sees right through him in a flash of quick eyes like Shiro is some locked puzzle, and he’d been given the key while they stood against the column last night.

Shiro’s sleep is blue and dreamless, but he still wakes shaking in the Castle- just the Castle, he realizes in waves, dizzy. It’s just the Castle. The ceiling is violet.

“...wake up. Wake up, wake up,” Something drips warm and thick over his hand but that can’t be right, he’s not in a cell, he’s not in a cell, not in a cell-

Shiro jerks his head to the right, heavy, clumsy, like some broken thing in need of re-calibration that no one can grant him. Keith’s shirt and neck are smeared red, lips twitching like he wants to say something else, but instead he just cards through Shiro’s hair and he’s human, so incredibly human; he must be because he bleeds redder than Shiro and his eyes are sad and he’s still there. Shiro starts to slip. The violet fades from his arm and he wants to snap himself out of it, get the pilot out of the room, out of danger- but Keith’s hand is the first in a long time to show him such gentleness, and the realization does more than suffocate him- it buries him. The room slides away.

Maybe that's where it starts, but certainly not where it ends, and the world keeps turning. They have a new mission. Lance comes out of his pod, the Castle departs from Arus, Keith gives no indication of anything extraordinary happening the night before even as Shiro glimpses gauze tape peeking from his collar and gets caught doing so. He finds himself staring- a lot, after that, and it should be embarrassing but the visual appreciation of something quiet and strong sneaks up on him, and he’s drawn to the archetype. Keith is some of the first human contact he’s had in ages. It's an excuse. There’s no good word for it.

They exchange words, briefly (sorry about waking you up) and sit together at the start of the flight (don't worry about it), settled against the arm of Shiro's chair like there’s nothing more to it, startled a bit by the easiness of it, but then, Keith is still barely more than a stranger. Shiro has miles left to pick up on his character- he hopes. The others make a ruckus around the deck to kill time, naming constellations and planets in passing after more and more ridiculous pop culture references, and Shiro tenses when Hunk comments again about Sendak's impromptu residency in the Castle, an unconscious reaction until suddenly Keith's eyes are on him and he knows he's doing it.

"Yeah, but it's not like we can drop him off at the nearest Galra outpost," Pidge breaks the mood. "'Think you lost this, might want to keep a better eye on him'- god, can you imagine?" She shudders as Lance lays across the steps again and stretches lengthily. "At the rate he'd been going, guy could've be Emperor next we heard from him." The speculation earns several laughs and oh my god ’s. Shiro manages a grin then and rubs his palms over his knees while Keith drops an arm to the surface behind his head, casual.

Hunk adds, “hey I mean, at least he won’t be monologuing at us for a while- that dude would probably talk to a wall if you put him in front of one, I bet the only reason he made Commander was because it was the only way to shut him up.”

“Guys, guys, we’re forgetting- maybe he's just a sleeptalker,” Lance says, “like maybe they just got tired of muzzling him at night, or, god, remember h-”

Violet rooms and metal bars flash across the back of Shiro’s eyelids. His hand twitches on impulse and he has to force an even breath to keep it from jumping to his nose. Fuck. Fuck.

“-guy in bunk four? Same conversation, every night!” Lance is still rambling, and Shiro drags in another slow breath to re-center on the discussion. He can get past this; it’s normal for recovering memory and he’s been schooled in learning to control these kinds of things, especially years past the worst pain in his life and onto something arguably just as rough, mentally. “I swear on Hunk’s baking, that kid was possessed!” It doesn’t make it easier but distractions will. Keith laughs beside him as Pidge interjects with another Garrison memory, stirring up the volume again and quieting after a minute as Shiro listens in amusement to the trio’s escapades, then bumps his shoulder forward. Shiro bumps back, a smile tugging at his mouth again, unbidden.

“They, uh,” Keith starts, softer than he needs to make himself around anyone, much less Shiro, “they didn’t… did they?”

He doesn’t respond until his smile falls fully, and brings a leg up to drape his arm over it, picks at the harsh crease of his boots. “Yeah. Think so.”

Keith digests the answer. They don’t look at each other.

Lance responds heatedly to something Pidge said, and gets flipped off before Hunk steps in, elbowing both of them with enough force to bruise. “-Seriously, knock it off. What would Iverson say if he could see us now?”

“Ugh,” Pidge crosses her arms and slumps against Hunk. “Probably something about all the regulation codes we’re breaking. Guy has no appreciation for advanced technology as it is.”

“Shiro, you knew the guy,” Lance says, leaning back on his hands. “Was he always such a stick in the mud, or did he have a cooler side- not like, hanging out with the other profs kind of cool, but like, undercover agent kind of cool-”

“I don’t think he was working with the feds, if that’s what you’re asking,” Shiro answers wryly, startling a laugh out of Keith.

“Iverson couldn’t be that much of a suit to save his life.” He tips his head back as if remembering something. “He might’ve been a hardass, but he wasn’t one of those spineless bastards.”

Lance shoots upright again. “Woah, woah, hold the phone-” He squints critically at Keith. “I mean, I knew you had to be a bit of a teacher’s pet, but-” Hunk whacks him lightly and Lance shoots him a glare. “What?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Pidge cuts in, combing fingers through her bangs and blowing them back into place with a breath. “If Iverson had anything on him then I would have dug it up while looking through his data files, but there was nothing- guy was squeaky clean. Even had a couple kids or something.” Hunk gapes and Lance makes a sort of a squawking noise.

“Yeah, well,” Keith says quietly, crossing his ankles. “Not much you can do for them now- his oldest son died in an Aurora test flight, never made it out of the cockpit.” This piece of information is met with more raised eyebrows and regretful looks, and Shiro thinks back to the Garrison.

“I remember that,” he realizes. “Kid botched an emergency landing a few miles out, and they said the crash caught two civilians- the man died, but his son-” Something cuts across the thought like a cold chill. His son was enrolled in the Garrison while they cleaned up the wreckage; a shack, in the desert, miles from the landing strip. Through a film of static, Hunk asks what they ruled it, probably assuming worse from Shiro’s lack of conclusion and he looks slowly at Keith, fears confirmed when something unspoken passes between them.

“Pilot error,” Keith answers, and looks away.

“Man, that sucks,” Lance murmurs, frowning. “What were they doing with Auroras anyways, I thought those things went out of commission in the twenties.”

“They went down after the Raptor reboot, right?” Pidge squints. “You know, I could’ve worked on those engines for days, the internal systems must've been just... beautiful.” She gets a faraway look in her eyes while Lance does the same across the floor. “Yeah, wish I had the chance to take one of those out for a spin. Maybe several spins. A good few spins.”

“I dunno,” Hunk shrugs, sounding uneasy. “Those things were nice, but it’s like Keith said- death traps if you don’t land them right.”

“Aw, how hard could it be?” Lance stretches. “I mean it’s not exactly stick, gears and breaks but there’s gotta be a common denominator to every aircraft, right?”

Keith rolls his eyes, monotone. “He’s a math nut after all.”

“At least I’m not a dropout, like somebody here.” Shiro grimaces as Lance crosses his arms, apparently taking offense, but he’s more exasperated than anything when Keith beats him to the dismissal with a quiet mutter- almost too quiet to make out, but Lance manages somehow.

That, or he’s just jumping to conclusions in asking, “oh, really? You don’t take me seriously?” Hunk groans. Pidge pinches the bridge of her nose.

“It’s a little hard to,” Keith answers, eyes narrowing. “When the only reason you made fighter class was because I dropped out.”

“You- I- well at least I stayed in the program, how about that? At least I didn’t start every fight on campus, or- or- go to those illegal races-”

“Oh, and I guess you believed that I was a cheat too, right? That I fucked my way to the honors cla-”

“Keith,” Shiro interrupts, more than a little horrified. “Enough.” The pilot goes quiet and slumps back against the chair, fight dissolving almost visibly. Shiro spares a glance at the stone-silent trio before reprimanding, “leave the vulgarity for something less juvenile- all of you. This isn’t how a team works, especially as Paladins of Voltron.” Lance shrinks when he adds, quieter, “or Garrison scholars, for that matter. Learn to get along, or we’re gonna have to do some serious team-building before we get to the Balmera.”

The group stews in uncomfortable silence for a long minute, but thankfully it’s broken another minute later by the persistent beep of an incoming transmission, and Shiro gets up as Coran calls out a reception for a distress signal. Hunk starts arguing about the Balmerans and priorities, but at least the distraction serves a purpose while the others groan and push themselves to their feet at the alert, even Keith carrying himself with no more stiffness than is usual, even if his expression goes a careful neutral throughout the ensuing discussion and stays that way after they decide on a course of action. It turns out the downed ship belongs to a trio of freedom fighters. They touch down and Pidge makes a beeline for one to disappear with the AI for the next hour or so; Lance, to nobody's surprise, attempts to do the same with their female companion, and both success rates vary while Shiro's attention is quickly redirected to the information Rolo lets slip. Allura’s fascination with the intel sparks a conversation.

"I don't trust these guys," Hunk mutters, stalking to the Castle in search of the parts they need.

"I'll keep an eye out," Shiro assures him. The Princess is already engaging with the older rebel, discussing whether there's an organized resistance to the Empire that he's come across.

Rolo scratches at his chin absently while Shiro approaches. "Not that I've heard of. Maybe a couple of locations that haven't been colonized yet, but that might be the extent."

"It has been ten thousand years," Allura agrees, brow furrowed in thought. "Perhaps it is better to have the element of surprise on our side, but Voltron without allies will quickly be overwhelmed."

"I hear you." Rolo rests his elbows on his knees where he sits, eyes further away for a moment. "The Empire is an inevitability to planets like mine."

Keith wanders into the circle. "If the Galra took over your planet, how did you escape? Were you- imprisoned?"

"For a while," Rolo admits, and tugs up his pant leg to reveal dark metal running past the knee, a hinged device that wraps smoothly around the joint. Shiro bites back an unnamed feeling that rises at the sight. "Got something for my troubles while I was there." Violet hallways, masked faces flash behind his eyes again but these memories are different than the arena, diluted and nebulous masses which come and go in more dreamscape than Shiro cares to see, and his own steel fist closes around air in the recollection.

"...I know exactly how that feels."

Keith's eyes are on him again.

"Nevertheless," Allura tries, hands clasped diplomatically in front of her. "We're doing all we can. Galra prisons will not be full for long."

"I hope you're right about that," The alien answers, rolling his pant leg down. "We've heard some things about the state of the nearest Galra cruiser- crazy place, run by a crazy guy with the name of Sendak."

Keith's tone shifts, but into what Shiro couldn’t say. "Oh, we've met."

Rolo crooks an eyebrow. "Yeah? How'd that go for you?"

Keith fiddles with his gloves, voice absent. "I kicked his ass." Shiro is nearly startled into a laugh at the literality; Keith really had put a boot to Sendak's tail before locking him below decks.

The amusement shrivels as Rolo whistles. "That's insane, kid. You know his rep came from the Arenas, right? Galra rise through ranks by honorable combat- and Sendak? Well, let's just say it's a shame the Champion's reign was after his run." That unnamed vice wraps across Shiro's torso again."Whoever it was might have put the guy in his place, no sweat." He looks Keith over, in some unconscious assessment again. Thankfully, Allura murmurs out an agreement and the group moves on, disbanding at some point to wander the length of the rebels' set up- though Pidge remains in places unseen with her new friend and Lance seems permanently glued to Nyma's side throughout. Shiro gravitates again toward Keith as the younger wanders past broken parts and the occasional box of junk.

An array of stars glitter past his head in the vivid backdrop. Shiro finds that the magenta dusk suits him, head swiveling around the landscape as if struggling to take it all in at once- but there's something wondrous in the vastness and Shiro feels it too, feels the overwhelm after so long in captivity even if he only has pieces of that time. He pauses at Keith's side again and considers pressing for more history, but Keith’s eyes are wide and he can’t bring himself to.

"It's so... endless," Keith says. "I never thought I'd get past the stratosphere."

Shiro laughs quietly. "View just isn't the same from eighty thousand, huh?"

He gets a ghost of a smirk in response, but Keith doesn’t take his eyes from the stars. “You forget some of us didn’t fly U-2’s, Shiro.”

“ER-2,” he corrects, following as the younger wanders past a few more boxes.

“Vulture.”

“Hellhound.”

Keith grins. “At least we sounded cool tearing up the sound barrier.” He scuffs at a metal crate briefly, sitting at the edge while Shiro does the same a few feet away. It’s hard to tell under the armor, but Shiro thinks his shoulders curl again, some defensive posture- though for what, he couldn’t say. What he could say, turns out to be a thoroughly explored topic. They talk about nothing for a while, easy as anything and probably twice as meaningful if Shiro’s honest with himself; Keith doesn't converse much as it is and when he does, Shiro wants to stop and listen for as long as he can. They’re both mainly concerned about the fight, seeking out allies, and it’s almost a surprise to find Keith a pace ahead in the same line of thought, but Shiro has to remind himself that the pilot was trained for this, fed through the same rigorous institution only a couple years less than himself.

Kogane, he thinks, the name finally sparking some distant memory. A boy throwing controls left and right, blasting through high-level sims like video games from the local arcade. A boy throwing his fist into noses and jaws, whispered about in the upperclassmen dorms and sneered at when emerging from each simulator, the gym, the halls. Kogane, Shiro remembers. A boy with loneliness weighing his shoulders down. A boy with grief driving him through every action. He wonders how he didn’t see it- the fire, the spirit, the head of dark hair and eyes that still cut him to the quick. They’d never ended up colliding at the Garrison, but there’s a certain flare to Keith’s person that no one ever quite forgets and it’s only stronger now, guarded more heavily, but stronger.

“What was it like?” Keith asks, after a lull in conversation. “Kerberos, I mean- what was Kerberos like?”

Shiro digests the question. “Just what everyone tells you. Big, cold- not cold, I mean, it was freezing, but-” Keith laughs and Shiro grins, too caught up in the sound to finish the thought. “I guess… I don’t know, Kerberos was a lot of things.” He hesitates and thinks for a moment, memory wandering.

Keith speaks up again. “What was the best?”

Shiro smiles a little, looking away. “The quiet. Kerberos was so quiet, Keith. Like I was… the only man in the universe. Like I was standing on the edge of humanity.” There aren’t quite words to describe it, that feeling of walking along a dusty, frozen surface; Earth and home to one direction; an endless abyss to another. “One wrong step, and it would all just... slip away,” he finishes, turning over his arm when it heats a dull violet. The answer hangs between them for a long while, and Shiro fiddles with the armor over his wrist and tries to decide how to steer the conversation into a lighter topic. “Anyway, you had to be one hell of a pilot at the Garrison. Ever dream of getting up here? With your own team?”

Blue eyes slide toward the sky, reflecting the stars back at themselves while Keith shrugs. “Guess I used to. Everyone dreams about that- flying into the unknown, right? Discovering worlds unseen?” He grins, small and bitter. Shiro wants to reach out and touch the corner of his mouth. “It’s just- a fantasy of childhood, and whatever. I was never going to make it.”

He considers the response before turning it on its axis. “Haven’t you?” Keith’s gaze shifts back to him. Shiro thinks for a foolish moment that he sees the cosmos still buried there, swirling around thought and emotion and spirit and alive, alive, alive.

Keith rubs at his jaw, shrugging again. “Maybe. I don’t- I don’t think anyone gets something like this for free, though, I mean. There’s always collateral.”

Shiro looks away, laughing at the sudden lump in his throat, and wonders about how everything this kid says feels like a blow to his trachea. “Guess that’s what the humanity was for, huh?”

“Fighting for your life doesn’t make you any less human, Shiro.” The transparency stings. Keith’s hands fall into his lap.

“Then what does,” he says softly, and thinks for a foolish second that he might find the answer here where he’s found it nowhere else, glancing back to Keith. The boy has something haunted in his blue eyes. The man clenches his fingers in red armor.

“Apathy,” he says. “Apathy does.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rip the italics... I'll add em in later

It turns out their rescue mission wasn’t such a rescue mission after all. In the end, the tables turn almost too fast for Shiro to keep up with; Lance is cuffed to a tree and Keith leaves Shiro with a firm thump beside his collar, blows them all away with how he goes after Rolo's ship. The gesture means something, suddenly, but Shiro's ears only start to burn after Keith calls out a yes sir and that's- newer, more concerning. He sets it to the back of his mind and listens to Hunk complain about trust and priorities and taking advantage and priorities, but in the end, everything manages to work out. They retrieve the Blue Lion, uncuff Lance from his tree, leave the scavengers to mend their ship now that it's... really broken. Shiro's faith in those caught on the fringes of the war wants to be shaken, but he knows better than to base his outlook on a couple of scammers just trying to get by.

One might have put him in the same position before Voltron. The masses went wild as the Champion tore through gladiators and prisoners alike, wrecking arena after arena on the will to keep breathing. To stay alive. The thought doesn't sit well with him, but then, neither does dwelling on his conversation with Rolo or Shiro’s still sporadically re-appearing memories, or the fact that his once tormenter is below decks at any given moment- and the only thing separating them is a thin sheet of glass. His sleep remains dreamless but no less disturbing.  
Shiro wakes shouting, arm drawn taut and ready to snap forward at the figure in his door before realization seeps in, and he loosens his fist, lowers his prosthetic and the harsh, violet lines blurring his vision.

No, he realizes- those are tears. Those are tears.

Keith crosses the room, and Shiro’s shaking his head, telling him to go in a torn voice, grappling briefly with a pair of wiry but careful arms before he sinks down in front of him. His grip slides to Shiro’s hands and the feeling rolls over him like a sweet nausea. “I’m not gonna hurt you,” Keith whispers, thumbs brushing over his palms. “You know that I’m not gonna let him hurt you again, Shiro.” He doesn't know why he's shocked at the feeling of hot moisture spilling down his face, dripping past his chin and into his lap- he must have done away with the fruitless action between finding higher priorities before arena matches and fighting nightmares like these after them. He closes his eyes and drags in air, tries to even his lungs, doesn’t know how to ask for what he wants because it feels as if his life has become a game of orders, ordered, ordering but the team isn’t here and Keith is- holding him steady, keeping him on the ground. Nobody’s watching, and he’s the only anchor Shiro has.

“Keith, I want you to-” He squeezes his eyes shut. They both know that any order he makes doesn’t carry any consequence, but Keith is still listening as if prepared to follow one. “Stay- stay with me, touch me-” The words are wrong, the setting worse, but Keith either doesn’t notice or does a good job of pretending so because he raises the backs of his fingers to Shiro’s lips, like quieting the room to think about it. Shiro remains rigid for a long minute. His breath comes shaky against smooth knuckles and it’s only when he opens his eyes that Keith reaches up again, and he realizes then that’s all he’s asking Shiro for; to look at him, to be unashamed with the request and it’s too much for his shattered self-importance, but Keith obliges in thumbing the wetness from his face and Shiro’s thoughts slip away with the tears. He treats it like any task Shiro would ask of him, of the team. Efficient, unoffended, upholding the facade in a way Shiro will be grateful for later, but his gentleness betrays him in the moment. He touches Shiro like he would touch something precious.

Like something powerful, irrepressible. Something devastating.

He doesn’t touch Shiro like he’s broken.

 

 

 

Things keep happening. The fight keeps pulling Keith in.

The Balmera is a can of Galra-shaped worms, cracked half open and taunting them to rush in, sink right into a trap. Keith gets firepower at the tips of his fingers, calls out another yes sir without thinking, opens a hangar door with those same fingers, trying to follow Shiro's orders with the team and save these people from a doomed life of enslavement. He gets his first taste of being a hero- not just to their immediate group or the Arusians, who'd never known the extent of the Empire's terror before- no, Keith gets his first taste of making a larger difference, ending a decades-long suffering. Liberation is a new experience and it's addictive.

The moment is all adrenaline, blood pumping through his veins, eyes darting between Lions and fighters and the Balmera's shuddering surface and back again. The planet is alive and maybe he's never been great with animals, but it doesn't take an activist to be enraged at the dying wails rising from the being, alive, and hurting, and none of them stand for that. Sinking below the surface is strange. It's different from the Castle in that the passages are rock structures and the walls are breathing, but Keith- likes it. Lance laughs at him for saying so, trying to make some point about how Keith is hiding the fact that he couldn't navigate his way out of a paper bag, and the reach baffles him as most of Lance's antics but they have a job to do.

"Oh, now you're a team player, huh?" Lance elbows his side in their trek to the Balmera's core. "Didn't see much of that when I was stuck to a tree.”

Keith shoots him a puzzled look. "Well, sorry if I was busy getting your Lion back- you know,” he fails to suppress a bit of sarcasm, “the one you lost? The one that's part of Voltron, the universe's only hope in defeating Zarkon? What's being more of a team player than that?"

"I was stuck there for an hour!" Lance waves his free arm wildly, as if the motion somehow proves his point. "Alone!" If Keith were a lesser man, he might snap back a cutting remark about leaving Lance there, to find out what alone really feels like when he's been wandering a desert weeks at a time with only the lizards at his feet keeping him company-

"Sorry," he grits through clenched teeth, and drops the topic. He's the one who's dealt with his truckload of issues under the unhealthy beat of the Arizona sun, and now isn't the time for being upset about a social life he'd never had, especially when his own volatility put him there in the first place. He'd do better to be angry at Lance's blatant disregard for the long suffering fate of the Balmerans, but it wouldn't get them any further either. "Let's just focus on getting back to the others."

Eventually, they do, and the disconnect is palpable. Hunk has a hand close by Shay's arm in the promise of support and Pidge is conversing rapidly with Allura while the Castle takes heavy fire. Shiro greets the two with a quick glance and hand to Keith's shoulder before falling back into the discussion. Lance, to his credit, wises up after a minute, and joins them in game plan speculation. After precious minutes of tension Shay presses her hand to the wall, face lined with worry and the fading marks of a Galra muzzle, pouring her heart out in the hopes of reaching someone, anyone willing to rise up against the Empire and decades of oppression. Keith sees a lot of Allura in her- in the spirit, the resilience. How many other people are out there willing to fight, desperate for anything to put their trust in and desperate to hope again?

It's eye opening- the Balmeran's courage, the beginnings of a protective fire behind her eyes. He shifts his to Shiro on a whim, wondering if he sees the same thing, that spark of life the Galra are hell-bent on tearing apart but Shiro only turns his head away when he does, like he’d been caught staring.

There’s no time to dwell on it as rock hums with energy in response to Shay's plea, and the metal door erupts with a burst of light and dust, cascades into the room like a breaking dam. Five pairs of footsteps pound through the tunnels in the haste to return to their Lions.  
The ensuing fight is grueling and on a larger scale, with more dire stakes that everyone feels by the end of the day, and when Keith is barely holding onto that rush of near crazed determination- the cruiser has gone down, but the robeast plummets past the atmosphere like a vengeful demon, and their weapons are powerless against it until Hunk unlocks the true power of his bayard. Allura lights the planet blue with quintessence. Millions of Balmeran lives hang in the balance for a few long, precarious minutes.

Keith watches their enemy rise and thinks of them, thinks about the futures being robbed by the Empire and something in the realization unhinges him so much that he slams the head of his Lion into the beast, solely on instinct, forgetting in the sudden swell of emotion to even form his sword. It's almost reminiscent of his lunge at Sendak. No shield, no backup plan; just pure, unadulterated fight in his bones and the uncontained urge to defend what's right in front of him, to protect what's most important.

The mission is a success.

 

 

 

"-and then Hunk was all like pachew, pachew, and then Keith went blam! and I can't believe you didn't see it Allura, it was insane-"

The princess huffs in fond amusement as Pidge recounts what she missed in the process of healing the Balmera. Keith can't seem to quit grinning, even while the adrenaline wears down and they make their way to the Castle, dusk settling the air along with a heavy exhaustion he hasn't felt in months. "I'll be sure to watch the playback from the Castle monitors, Pidge," Allura reassures her, steadily limping on with the support of Shay and Coran beside her after expending so much energy in so little time had taken a toll. "But I am proud of you all. Thanks to Voltron, the people of this planet will no longer live under the Empire’s tyranny.”

"We cannot thank you enough," Shay adds, sending a warm smile in the team's direction. Lance begins stammering and reddening in the attempt to accept the gratitude, much to the exasperation of Hunk and Pidge- but Shay only pulls him into a lighthearted embrace before the team ascends into the Castle once again. They all receive the same hug, and Keith isn't the only one caught off guard. He tries to rub the whiplash out of his neck while they speed upwards to the deck. Quiet finally blankets the group in a brief moment of procession for what they’ve accomplished.

"That was a pretty hard hit you took back there," Shiro says at length, breaking the silence gently. "You might want Coran to take a look before hitting the bunks."

Keith shakes his head just to prove he can. Pidge snorts, and the corner of Shiro's mouth twitches up. The image stays with him the rest of the night, like the phantom weight of Shiro’s hand over his shoulder and it's... concerning again, a different kind of feeling in his gut as weariness tugs at his limbs and Keith kneads the back of his neck between scrubbing soapy bathwater through his hair. He slips further against the tile and sighs, tries to remember the last time he'd been around so much dust. The desert is the easy answer. Living in sand and stone and sun for a year, scrounging for energy sources and odd jobs while the shack stayed empty and cold and lonely.

It wasn't always that way. It used to be cozy, encompassing; hours of watching his father take apart old radios and show him how to put them back together, as if some time they'd tune into the right station and hear... something. Keith still aches for those golden days, spinning around a lamp-lit, securely cluttered living room and trying to mirror turns and dives taken by Garrison aircraft overhead. It was all he wanted- Keith, the only family he had, and trying to touch the sky. He’s sure now that he got there too soon. The accident came out of nowhere.

He doesn't remember much of it. They told him later it was a product of the shock, just as matter-of-fact that they called it pilot error, like they always did; Keith was offered a room and a lifetime’s worth of compensation in the form of military tuition, and at fourteen he was the teenage prodigy finally in the sky but at such a cost. Dwelling only brings back his conversation with Shiro about the universal demand for collateral, and Keith might be a firm believer in everything going around coming back around, but somehow it never occurred to him that one day he might find the inverse of that or some exchange to make up every sacrifice and hurt. It seems wrong somehow, disingenuous. Shiro didn’t get here on some strange karma or predestined fate, Keith thinks. Shiro fought for this. He fought for it.

The water is nearly cold by the time he decides he's grateful the two of them didn't meet at the Garrison. Watching Shiro disappear into the clouds, turn into nothing more than a lesson to learn would have been impossible to come back from, would’ve put a permanent dent in his heart and he knows even as he comforts himself with the fact that it didn't, and sinks into the disquieted speculation of how wide Shiro's hand might span the width of his waist, how his fingers might feel brushing back Keith's hair. The door slides open after a minute. He has a hand over the side of the tub before he can think about it, going for-

What? His clothes? His knife?

But it’s just Shiro- of course it’s Shiro, of course it has to be Shiro.

He glances around the bathroom absently before he sees Keith, and then the blade in his hand -he had grabbed it, dammit- but nothing about the reaction seems to faze the pilot when he just shifts the small bag on his shoulder, slips it off and approaches. “Guess I wasn’t the only one trying to peg the bath, huh?”

“Lance was in the other one,” Keith answers, grip easing from his weapon. “Almost threw a fit when I walked in.”

Shiro grins, exhaustion weakening the action but not the gesture, and he lowers himself slowly onto the edge of the tub. Keith drags his hand absently through the bubbles. “Sounds like Lance. You get away unscathed, or did he throw something at you again?”

Keith scoffs. “You say that like he could have actually hit me.”

“So what was it?”

“His pants.”

Shiro doesn’t laugh fully -too tired- but the sound reverberates through the empty washroom, rippling over Keith like the dip of his fingers in water. He thinks he’s drowning, drowning already and somehow it doesn’t matter. “I hope you gave them back.” His tone takes on something incredulous and scandalized at Keith’s shrug. “Keith. ”

“He’ll live,” Keith says, flicking suds at Shiro. He’s dressed differently, in draping clothes with soft colors, loose fabric. Of course he is- he came here to bathe, came here to be alone and Keith should leave so he can have the privacy, but Shiro’s eyes travel briefly to the gauze pasted across his chest like he’d been trying not to look, and some new worry invades the off-beat in his chest.

“Doesn’t that-” He swallows and looks away. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” Keith answers truthfully. He knows how to look after a shallow cut, at least, and the damage had only looked worse than it was. Shiro had just grazed him. Water gets past his brows again and he hisses, trying to grin through scrubbing at the sting. “At least- not any worse than the soap in m- hey!” Shiro dips a hand in the water and flicks it at him. Keith yelps, shields himself and swears loudly before Shiro laughs at the indignation.

“Language, cadet,” he says, almost a tease. Keith mutters back something defiant and looks up in time to get a handful of cloudy water scrubbed into his hair, which prompts him to splash a little too hard in Shiro’s direction and that’s how they find themselves sopping wet and red eyed, space ringing with happy chaos while Shiro slips and tries to climb out of the tub, ultimately unsuccessful. The room floods too loud with laughter, Keith shouts something about Shiro being ridiculous, they both sink in the lukewarm water and giggle like cadets abusing their hygiene hour after curfew, and Keith’s clothes are lost in a growing puddle on the floor, and Shiro’s- Shiro’s are ruined-

Something catches Keith’s eye under the white fabric of his shirt. Then another. Another. His laughs are still dying into quieter huffs and breaths between them, but Keith’s smile disappears all at once before something harsh and upset cuts his throat at the realization of what they are, shift sudden and from one extreme to the next. He tears his eyes away, conscious of the fact that barely anything is separating them but a few feet and several gallons of cloudy water and worrying that that’s not what worries him, not really.

Maybe Shiro notices. Maybe he picks up Keith’s line of thought- but either way, he quiets, shifts his eyes in a mirror image across from Keith. The silence stings somehow and water sloshes, settles around them. Shiro clears his throat.

“Just- say it.” He isn’t looking at him suddenly, fingers curled around the edge of the tub. “Say whatever you’re going to say.” Keith raises a hand to his neck awkwardly, rubbing at the feeling where it nestles in his esophagus, foreign and distressed again. What is it, he asks, rifling through the possibilities like a nervous tic. What? “...It’s okay,” Shiro mutters, but Keith knows it’s not and that it’s the one thing this couldn’t be when Shiro’s eyes are so haunted, all the fight so faded from his voice, too young to sound so defeated.

“It’s not,” Keith says. “It’s not okay.” Shiro looks up, eyes widening when Keith then says, “I’ve just never seen… I didn’t realize. The extent.” He hesitates, eyes drifting with the tentative permission, chest aching. “They... really fucked you up.” Silence spreads between them again like a reminder of how there are miles of differences there too. Shiro lost an arm, lost his team, told Keith he thinks he lost his humanity. While Keith was obsessing over energy fields and Lion carvings, Shiro was locked and muzzled in a cell somewhere, Shiro was stripped of his dreams and his life and his freedom and that’s something anyone else would have been consumed by, but here he is, pulling a team through waves of Galra like it’s second nature- and laughing, throwing soapy bathwater at Keith, sitting soaked and tired across from him like he’d stay there the rest of the night if Keith wanted. He talks to him like an old friend and leads him like an equal and sometimes- sometimes it’s hard to believe he’s real.

“I’m sorry they did this to you,” Keith manages, more in a whisper than anything, throat thick with distress again. He’s blinking too fast, and it’s not because of the water running into his eyes. Shiro didn’t deserve it. He’s too good of a soul to deserve any of it.

“I’m sorry about the Garrison,” he answers back, ever selfless. “What you said the other day. I didn’t know.”

Keith shakes his head. “Everyone knew what they said about me.”

“Not that.” Shiro’s heart is written across his eyes. “The Aurora accident. I didn’t know you were the one they took in after the crash.” He pauses again, twisting his hands slightly. “I’m sorry, Keith.”

“Don’t be,” he says, shifting. “I’ve gotten enough condolences to last a lifetime, Shiro. Everyone says them.”

“I didn’t mean it like-”

His breath is escaping him suddenly. “-I know. I know, Shiro, everyone says that too. It’s okay.” Maybe it’s not, for either of them, but his lungs are aching and he’s never been good at articulating how bad the reaction pains him. “Can we- can we do this some other time?”

“Keith-”

“Please,” he interrupts, pushing wet hair from his face with shaky hands, dammit, why are they shaking? “Just- just leave me alone for a while. Just leave me alone.”

He’s silent for a long moment. Eventually he stands to get his footing, wades slowly toward the side of the tub and steps over. He doesn’t touch Keith. He doesn’t try to speak, the water is cold again, Keith’s eyes are stinging.

By the time he turns with the intent of calling him back, Shiro is gone, and his lungs are liquid.

 

 

 

He stretches out along the Castle's hidden deck later that night. Foolishly, he thinks the night air will help or that counting off the speckled night sky will clear his head of Shiro for once. It doesn't work. Balmeran wind whistles away his voice and giving familiar names to unfamiliar constellations isn’t helping anyway. He resigns himself to textbook knowledge and cold air, releasing breath like he'll run out eventually and have nothing left to say.

Keith searches foreign skies and just sees his Lion, the silhouette of newly instated Paladins, the plane models he used to know that are gone now. Sometimes it’s easier to think that they never existed, that all of this is the real world and he just needed to wake up from the old one. And- Shiro. Keith isn’t trying to, but he sees Shiro in every star across the sky. His next exhale forms the name he never put a face to until it was scarred and worn and turned toward him, unguarded like Keith was the only one in the room and laid out on freezing metal, Keith feels like the only one on the planet, breathes in the air like he is- breathes out Shiro, Shirogane, wishing he could hold more than that for six counts.

It’s a fickle thought, but Keith wants to know why he never goes by his given name. He wonders if it’s a relic for him, some piece labelled human and buried in a vault somewhere like precious evidence from a cold case, erased from use but not from memory. Keith wonders if it’s been retired after too much application- ruined by some forgotten lover his mind refuses to conjure up, but he shouldn’t be speculating and it’s not his place. It never will be.

But he wonders.

He sees Shiro’s hands in his mind’s eye and wonders how they’d feel in his hair, sees his smile and wonders whether it ever lilts and settles into something sly, sees his eyes so intense already- and he tells himself there’s no harm in appreciating something strong, beautiful, even if Shiro doesn’t see it himself and the wondering never comes to anything. Keith draws in a deep breath and covers his burning face. He sucks at this teammate thing, this friendship thing, hasn’t been with a group of people to call his own for a long time, and while it’s stopped stinging since it feels like Shiro might have re-opened the wound that Keith sewed shut by himself all those months ago, all those years. He aches to give something back, or to show him there’s more to fighting a war than burying his past or trying not to bury anyone else.

Keith doesn’t want to fix Shiro because he’s not broken- but if Keith could give him his eyes, give him the aching sweetness beneath his ribs, tell him there’s more to life than sacrifice and redemption then maybe they’d both find something harder to lose than the war.

Does it hurt, Shiro had asked him.

“Unbearably,” Keith whispers to the stars, drowning in the beginning of a feeling he thought he'd forgotten.


	3. Chapter 3

Champion.

Shiro rolls the name over once, twice along his trek through the Castle, boots splashing through puddles left by overflowing, sporadically flickering bathrooms, Balmeran rain pattering just as dismally along the windows. How can someone be a gladiator if they fight themselves?

“How can anyone be a soldier,” he startles at the voice coming to his right, finds Allura beside him, brows creased, “when they fight the wrong war? You know, my father asked me the same, once. It is not as difficult a question we like to make it.”

He sighs and rubs his jaw, a nervous habit. “Rationalizing your own self-hate isn’t easy either, I’m sorry.” Thunder rumbles outside the darkened halls. “But justifying personal motives and arguing what noble cause is behind what struggle are two completely different-”

“-different things? Do you even hear yourself?” Shiro turns jerkily at another question, questioning where Pidge came from and unnerved at the way her glasses glint back at him, the robotic way she fiddles with the photo in her hands. “Do you even remember where you left my family to _die_ , Shiro?” Screaming tears across the corridors, ripples over his skin like frozen rain and Shiro stumbles, reaches for the walls because this isn’t right, he’s not supposed to be here- but the alternative is a prison from which he doesn’t know how he escaped, only that he can’t go back, and the resolution shifts the ground under his feet, throws him off balance at the doorway to the baths but that’s not water, he realizes, mouth drying at the sight of Keith slumped against the tub’s edge. He’s soaked in it, red splattered across skin but this time everywhere, everywhere-

“You let the lines blur, and this is what happens,” Pidge accuses. “A monster is born, the Champion is born- how do you know you can really trust yourself, Shiro-”

“What? No.” Violet sears across his eyes and he shoves his arm down at a spike of panic, watching face after face materialize in the dark and stare, judge. “No. No, that’s not me!” But isn’t it? The evidence is written across his body, imprinted in the way he thinks, talks, everything that makes him a leader is what makes him a _killer_ -

“Shiro!”

His fingers spasm in the pillow. He jerks on his side, tangled in sheets and blankets and shaking limbs. “-damn it, goddammit, would you just shut up for one night-” Something warm and smooth drags over his curled shoulders, and it does nothing but fuel the struggling until Keith’s low rasp reaches him again. “Okay- okay, I’m here, I’m gonna-” He fights Shiro down again and Shiro lets him, heaving for oxygen in defeat when the pilot tucks fabric tighter over him. “...okay, that’s it, that’s it.”

“Keith,” Shiro says, hoarse and muted through a rush of blood in his ears. “Keith, I was hurting you- I hurt you-”

“No.” Steady hands take his face in two palms, drag fingers over the horrible wet below his eyes, unmistakably caring. “Shiro- no.” He’s so sure of it. The room is still spinning, warped, violet blurred between dust particles like hidden pockets of a past he doesn’t remember, still peeking through his present and the people there. Keith is so close that Shiro only sees one eye, one creased brow, the sharp curve of his cheek from the left to the right and the dark line of a cut bone structure sweeping the opposite way, hair feathered over both in a fall of black. A few strands are caught straying over his pale mouth. He’s so young, so earnest, almost untouched by the fight and the cooling hand Shiro brings toward his face- almost.

The texture of tough skin on his knuckles forces another breath from deep in Shiro’s chest. “I’m sorry.” He tries to remember what he’s apologizing for, and can’t. “I’m sorry.”

Keith doesn’t ask.

 

 

 

“Wait, you’re saying that on top of poking around in Sendak’s head, you want us to do _another_ training exercise?” Lance sounds scandalized, as if they haven’t been doing this since day one. Keith shakes his head and props his chin in his hand. “But Princess-”

“Lance, please,” Allura interrupts sharply, mashing her food goo with a spoon. “We’re back in the air now, which means we could come across another Galra fleet at any moment. I will not have this team unprepared.”

Shiro pats his shoulder sympathetically. “The Princess is right- we got lucky when Hunk unlocked his bayard on the Balmera, but we can’t count on our weapons to wield themselves. If another fleet shows up, we’ll have to be ready.”

Pidge sighs and hangs her head. Lance holds her bangs back before they can get in the food goo. “We’ve just come off a fight, we’re as ready as we’ll ever be. Besides, we already know another fleet will show up- you couldn’t throw a rock across the universe without hitting several thousand Galra cruisers. The question is just when.”

“Maybe if we had some sort of tracking device to find their locations,” Keith finally pitches, “make a map or something.”

Hunk yawns beside him, face pressed in exhaustion to the metal surface. Keith is sure that can’t be comfortable, but he’s been there all morning, and at least they can hear when he answers. “The only mapping technology are those BLIP things we dropped in the Balmera.” He turns his head blandly to the left. “And they’re still in the Balmera.”

“Am I sensing an all stop to the engines here?” asks Lance. He laces his fingers together and glances at Shiro. “Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred bucks kinda thing while we go back for that tech- or what?”

“We just left the Balmera. And besides, I’m sure Pidge can engineer the BLIP tech again if we need it. For now, we should focus on getting in that training while we have some room to breathe.”

“Or we could, you know, use all that room to actually take a breather,” Hunk sighs, and turns his face back to the tabletop. It effectively smushes his nose, turns his voice higher and nasally. “But I don’t think going back to the Balmera will help anyway Lance- go on, tell me what’s wrong with the goo batch.”

Keith frowns. “What does our breakfast have anything to do with this?”

Lance and Pidge gasp as if hearing blasphemy. Shiro puts his head in his hand when they cling to each other as if personally affronted, Allura sighs and swirls the Altean-coffee-equivalent lightly around her mug again, expression bordering on somewhere between intrigued and mystified, and Keith regrets asking. “It’s not just breakfast,” Lance educates him haughtily. “Hunk’s cooking is like a weather forecast, Keith! Good mood equals good food, bad mood equals- well, still good food, but something is- something is lacking when Hunk doesn’t feel like himself, you know?”

“Salt, specifically,” Hunk answers from the tabletop, holding up a finger. “I forgot to add the salt to this batch.”

“It’s happened. He’s in love,” Pidge says bluntly, to which Hunk raises a finger in protest and slowly lowers when it dies.

Allura laughs again, but quieter. “Which there is absolutely no time for, by the way. I’m sorry Hunk, but perhaps you and Shay can spend more time together after we defeat Zarkon.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Lance raises a hand as if asking permission to speak -a shock in and of itself- eyes wide as he processes this apparently unspoken rule. “Let me get this straight; first, we survive a high-stakes battle and immediately go back to training, with no time to rest, while Hunk is- well, like _this_ , and now there’s _another_ archaic Paladin rule we’ve gotta remember? I mean, I get that we’re on a time frame here, but come _on_ , Princess!” Keith raises an eyebrow at the genuinely tired note to his voice. “We’re exhausted!”

Allura goes back to moving food around her plate, shoulders curling with a sigh that speaks volumes. She may not be human, but she’s also not invincible- and that crystal ceremony _did_ take a lot out of her. Overseeing a team with the likes of Lance can’t be easy work.  
“The last time a Paladin took a bride, the team-” she pauses, brows drawn together as if it’s difficult to say, “the team suffered immensely. So no- as of now, the mission must come first. There will be plenty of time for frivolity when the war is over, Lance.” Frivolity, Keith repeats to himself, unsurprised as the stinging splash of water comes back to him, a peal of laughter from Shiro’s joy-smoothed voice and the shade of kindness in his eyes while bumping Keith’s shoulder. He quickly shuts down the thought because Allura is right, there’s no time for anything like that when they have a job to do- but he still chances a look at the pilot, hand propped into his jaw, eyes downcast. He’s smiling. Keith’s heart does something funny in his chest.

“It’s fine, Lance,” Hunk says, turning his cheek against the table again. “I’m sure Shay will find some other nice rock to cook with… watch the sunrise with…” His nose scrunches like he might cry- but that might also be from having it pressed too long into the metal surface.

“You’re really hung up over this lady, huh?” Pidge asks, eyebrow shooting upward.

“I don’t know,” he sighs, shoulders slumping again. “It’s just- seeing what the Galra did to her people? That made me angry. I don’t get angry.”

“Everyone gets angry, Hunk,” Shiro says, smile tugging at his mouth.

“You- know what I mean,” he responds, and starts again, quieter. “I just keep thinking- when we took on the Galra for the first time, it was with a superweapon on our backs, but Shay didn’t have that. She trusted us, yeah- but turning against her captors?” He glances up at the others. “Giving up all she’d ever known?” They’ve all sobered into listening when he says, “that might have been the hardest moment of her life. I know I’m not really one to talk because... I mean, it wasn’t forever when we gave up Earth. Leaving everything behind.” He shrugs and looks round at them again. “But showing Shay that she didn’t have to be afraid of change, it helped me too. It made the decision to stay worth it.”

Keith sits forward. “You know what you’re talking about more than any of us, Hunk.”

“Wai- seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously,” he answers. “You were the only non-pilot on the team, and even Pidge had picked up the flight manuals before flying. You gave up everything familiar to start all this from scratch.” Hunk blinks. “I’d say that had to be a pretty hard decision too.”

“...Yeah,” he responds, after another long pause. “I guess I was just- looking for a reason to stay, you know?”

“We all were at first,” Keith says, shrugging, thinking back to victory cheers and a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe Shay just helped you realize yours.”

The simplicity seems to strike the rest of the team, even if he wasn’t trying to be profound and even as Lance whispers loudly, “well it sure wasn’t the food.”

The others hear and break into a few quiet laughs, then muffle them as Coran squints toward the Blue Paladin to ask what he’s saying about his cooking this time. Allura hides a smile behind her hand, clearing her throat while they re-orient into something more focused than before. “It seems your victory at the Balmera made for some important discussion, Paladins. You’ve come a long way since Arus, and I’m- rather proud of all of you, even if some of the Earth references go over my head.”

Pidge and Lance exchange a sheepish grin, and the former reaches for her mug while answering, “Sorry, Princess. If it’s any consolation, we’re just as lost when it comes to Altean- well, that and the crystal we have on deck, that thing’s been messing with my equipment since I touched it and I can’t figure out why. It’s not like any of the other samples we picked up at the Balmera.”

“Yeah, how does that work anyway?” Lance adds, frowning. “If they came from the same place, why are they different? Does it have something to do with that quintessence magic stuff, or... what?”

Allura hums in thought. “If the crystal had come from a corrupted Balmera pocket without the proper ceremony, then it makes sense that it could interfere with the Castle’s systems. Perhaps I ought to look into that today.”

“Princess, you need more rest before you can do anything,” Coran worries, setting a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure Pidge and I can handle it.” He receives a nod of affirmation from the cadet, and Allura sighs in agreement.

“Very well,” she says, addressing the team again, “keep an eye out just in case. And I suppose... well, one day of rest and recharge won’t make the world end any faster, will it? Fine, then. Just this once.”

The entire table shares a relieved grin.

 

 

 

"Okay guys, Sendak's all hooked up!" Coran sets the last of the extractors to the glass and tugs on the chords individually, glancing around as Pidge circles the pod for the nineteenth time and marvels. Something still doesn't sit well in Shiro’s gut with the way they’re all gathered there, but he reminds himself that it’s better this way- at least if the experiment goes wrong, they’ll have strength in numbers, and the only question mark in the room is between what Hunk has decided to cook for dinner and what Lance would rather be doing than waiting for their prisoner to talk. Shiro glances at Keith. He reddens slightly and looks away, but there’s a rigidity to his stance too.

Coran speaks up in warning again for -Shiro counts- the fifth time, and he tries to reason out the worry for as much in reminding him, "Coran, we understand this isn't what the technology was meant for,” though he’s not sure either of them are putting the team at ease any more or less. Pidge jumps in with several questions and Hunk with a comment. Shiro studies Sendak through it all, unsure of what he’s looking for. Lance interrupts with something about storing his memory in a giant ship to which Keith mutters back a snarky response, Coran turns on the extraction device, and... nothing happens. Sendak remains dormant in the pod, and silent, immobile.

Ten minutes tick by. Then another, and another.

Shiro tries to brush away the tension mounting through his spine, sending a dull ache to grip his temples and wrap like a living thing around his neck that seems determined to squeeze all the air out of him before they’ve finished here. He interrupts the regret with a little, mumbled chastisement of how there’s no getting around this, Sendak is under your skin. Deal with it like a leader, not a psychiatrist, because in Shiro’s mind, the two were not usually the same.

They wait and wait and wait, and Shiro thinks- about the mission, their objective to get information, possible rebel locations, intel from inside the Empire. He thinks of getting answers, advantages, and most decidedly does not think about the curve of a bare shoulder, streaks of bathwater down slender arms and the kind gaze of someone in a dark room close enough to caress, exposed enough to take a fist around the throat and never be heard from again and there’s what it comes down to; Keith isn’t fragile in any sense of the term, but his mortality was an afterthought until then. He was gone when Shiro woke up and it’s the only right thing Shiro’s done during it all, and even then it wasn’t a conscious choice. In the green light, Sendak looks demonic. His pod reflects Shiro’s face back at himself.

Calm doesn’t come easy, but stillness does, and the minutes tick on and on unchecked as the team drifts through poses around him. Shiro schools his mind into something close to peace -or at least focus- and eventually manages to mostly drive Keith from his musings-

“ _Well_ ,” Keith yawns loudly behind him. “I can’t wait around any more. I’m gonna go hit the training deck.”

Shiro hangs onto that focus by threads and lets him go. The rest of the team disappears. He doesn't pace. He used to pace- in Garrison halls before exams, on the landing strip before a flight assess, the floor of his holding cell before an arena fight and the latter is why he can't stand it now, he thinks, why he can't break a stiff posture without the situation being dire. That, and he's not sure he wouldn't leave the task immediately and scream into an empty room until the echo comes back unforgiving enough, but all resignations aside, he’s even more frustrated with the immediate threat. Alone, with Sendak. Granted the Galra is dormant behind two inches of glass, but Shiro still begins to sweat, taking a long, even breath as he stands, watches. The Commander remains just as still. It occurs to Shiro that he looks exactly the same as he did that day the Castle had almost been lost- the day Shiro had been in cuffs, been forced to watch his team taken away, been powerless _again_ -

He steps forward to set his arm against the glass. "I know you're in there, Sendak.” Something cold drives his tone at the recollection, frustration replaced with quieter anger. “I know you have all the answers." No response. “Give them to me."

Seconds slip by. Sendak betrays no movement, no shred of life, _nothing_.

Shiro’s fist connects with glass before he can think better of it, releasing a sharp noise from the base of his chest- "You're a broken soldier, you _can't_ hold out forever!" The secondary pod lights up, and his stomach twists in triumph. He grins before he can stop himself.

"...so you can hear me."

 

 

 

“Stupid-” _clang_! “-stupid!” _Clang_! “He doesn’t need you. None of them need you!”

Keith swings and misses and goes thumping back to floor, spine throbbing from the force of impact. Distantly, he knows beating himself up over the fact is not only pathetic but melodramatic, and more suited to Lance than a pilot of his status and skill level, but he also distantly knows the bot is coming for him in his peripheral, and doesn’t care. Oxygen won’t flood his overworked lungs fast enough. Every part of him aches, throbs, then sweeps back into motion to dodge the next whistle of sword through the air toward him, and continues to move after that- so maybe he’s not expending as much energy as he’d thought. The gladiator kicks him toward the center of the room. Keith blocks another lunge and thinks about the last time he was useful for something other than a fight.

The thing is; he can’t.

Hunk provides food and sunshine to the darkest corner of the universe where the castle drifts, Pidge brings the brains and bratty attitude that only she gets away with, somehow, Lance’s expertise lies in finding the humor to every hopeless situation and Keith’s is- what? To be dragged along the back like tin cans from a wedding cab, taking out ankles on the down low like some temporary vengeance waiting to be released into the wild? Imagining it pulls a grunt from his stomach. The bot kicks him down again and he wheezes out a cease-fire, rolls onto his side to recover momentarily.

A whole world was opened up once he got past the stratosphere. What terrifies him now is how easily it could all slip away, but at least he understands what Shiro meant about Kerberos; Shiro, the big question mark, the first name on the list of people who decidedly should _not_ need Keith. He hadn’t consciously planned on slipping back into his room last night, just like he hadn’t planned any of their interactions in the beginning but now they’ve come and gone, and he’s afraid for craving more, because it isn’t apathy that made him leave in the end. Maybe that’s another edge to the anxiety.

“Sensing high levels of emotional instability from: Paladin, Red,” the intercom chimes.

Keith snorts. “No shit.”

“Suggesting additional exercise for: Paladin, Red. Mental activity twenty-four b downloading to headset.” A hexagonal pillar rises beside his head, cut through the middle with that hollow shelf that holds extra gear or sometimes, if the team is especially unlucky, bonus bombs. Keith pushes himself into a sitting position. “O.K. changes to program?” There’s a small blinking in the center chip that isn’t usually there. He smudges his thumb over the light and frowns, but picks up the band anyway, shrugging.

“Yeah, sure,” he answers, and the room blackens before he’s even put the headset on.

 

 

 

Shiro prods for nearly an hour, asking every question he can think of; where Zarkon found the Red Lion, where Sendak would strike against the Empire, what was the first rank he held. The urge to demand answers, information, any shred of what happened in the Arena is strong- but it's not his mission, not _their_ mission, and he needs to stay on task. Sendak still yields nothing. The initial triumph of getting a response from the commander fizzles and dissipates. Victory sours into something frustrated and tedious, but Shiro can wait. He's had a lot of time to perfect patience in the last year. He can wait-

“What makes you think,” a low voice echoes around the room, startling him from his thoughts, “you can possibly defeat him?”

Shiro blinks at the immobile Galra, unable to keep his brow from furrowing at the apparent refusal to move. Stubborn bastard. “If you were to attack Zarkon,” he continues, if a bit apprehensive, “where would you strike?”

“Why strike at all?” The response has his head whipping back along the length of the room. “When you can _join_ him?” Sendak is finally speaking, and the victory is still cold, still unnerving because he’s speaking- and yet his eyes are closed, his mouth is closed, how is that _possible_ \- “We’re connected, you and me.” Shiro stiffens, still frozen but struck rigid now. “Both part of the Galra Empire.” He opens his mouth to snap denial back, and it’s a fruitless waste of time and humoring their enemy but suddenly, it’s all he can think matters. They’re elbow-deep into a ten thousand year old war with only a group of rag-tag cadets to show for it, he’d be a fool not to recognize the oldest trick in the book of goading someone ad hominem into false defeat, his shattered sense of identity has been through this before a dozen times over already and re-affirmed twice as much by his new team but what if- _no_ , what if, what if-

“No.” His voice cracks, throat tightens. “I-I’m not like you-”

“You’ve been broken, and reformed.” Sendak is echoing, echoing through his blood and his bones and his nerves. “Just look at your _hand_.”

Shiro’s eyes dart to the offending limb before he can retreat, affronted by sleek metal and vivid memories, and his breath continues to shallow but he can’t control it. There’s something crazed in how desperate he is to refute. “Th-that’s not me-”

“It’s the strongest part of you- _embrace_ it.” Sendak won’t be stopped. “The others don’t know what you know.” Shiro’s collar is soaked; he takes another step back. “They haven’t _seen_ what you’ve seen.” He’s shaking, shaking, and his arm is prickling, aching, heavy. He needs to get out- he needs to get away- “Face it, you’ll never beat Zarkon! He’s _already_ defeated you-”

“-I’m not listening to you!” Shiro curls, fists in his hair, ghosts in his eyes, there’s no air in the room and he can’t breathe, think, breathe-

“Do you really think a _monster_ like you could be a Voltron Paladin? What’ll it be, boy- a facade until you rip their beating hearts from their little chests? End it now! That’s what you really wanted, wasn’t it? To die, a _hero_ so they might worship your gilded memory?!”

“Stop it!”

_Crunch_.

 

  
“Accessing memory files...”

The sound screams high pitched and deafening all at once, plane cleaving the air before metal smashes the ground into flames right in front of him, his father right in front of the nose and then gone in an ear-piercing screech of tearing steel and erupting fuel lines, time blurring with haze and smoke until flashing lights have all but drowned the wreckage from sight. Keith watches himself take a breath that still tastes like iron and gasoline. Iverson stands beside him, seven years younger and twice as stricken.

“My boy. My boy is in that plane.”

Heat smudges the air beside where the shack has caught fire and this is the first one, Keith can only realize, that can’t be doused, not for a long time.

“I... I think my dad is in that plane, too.”

It takes a beat to register, but when it does, Iverson’s eyes are hollow with agony and grief. The scene dissolves and another figure takes its place- new, bigger, horrifyingly familiar. Keith backs away and claps a hand across his mouth, half afraid of choking on his own spit as it gathers on his tongue. He reaches for his dagger with the other hand.

“You have no idea, do you?” Sendak asks. He opens a clawed fist and there sits the weapon, hilt coming unwrapped, shedding violet rays across the dark and lighting on his incomprehension. “Where did you think that mean streak originated? Born of overcoming hardship?” The commander laughs, hard and loud as scraping metal across chalk or wedged between rusting hinges as they screech closed, cut abruptly only when he stops- but even then, the echoes ring out through every corner of the dark until Keith slaps his palms over his ears for fear of never shaking the sound from his head. He sinks to his knees in a jarring _thunk_ of folded legs. “Pathetic. There’s more hope for the human than you in this state.”

“Dammit- dammit, no-”

A second silhouette materializes to the right; Shiro sits in front of Sendak’s cracked pod and clutches his head in his hands, and Keith whips back toward the Galra when he starts toward Shiro. “What are you- don’t, stop. Stop it!” Claws skitter down Shiro’s back. He trembles and shakes and curls from the threat of danger.

“The thing about sentience is that it’s an open door,” Sendak hisses, “and fragile, life is so fragile, young Paladin. All, not just humans, are weak for others and all, including humans will break for another’s well being-” His figure glitches, multichromatic for a cluster of seconds before it clicks back into clean edges and smug power. “-but only a few will ever rise above such limitations. He’ll break you. They’ll all break you if you let them, or in enough time, you’ll watch yourself do the same.” The commander hurls his dagger toward Keith, and Keith flinches back when it embeds itself into the ground, catching himself on both palms. “Do it. Take him out.”

“No!”

“Will you wait to be discarded? To be forgotten, thrown to the wolves, wasted on people in an endless cycle of empty fulfillment?”

Keith grasps at his dagger, smoke stinging his eyes and making them water. “Gh- I’d take empty fulfillment over empty causes any day, _Sendak_! Life deserves to be protected-”

“Oh, to what end?” the commander interrupts, claws digging into Shiro’s shoulder. “There will always _be_ the war, the same waged over and over again- but admit it, Paladin, you’d rather die a martyr than live _forever_ and _forgotten_!” Shiro’s head jerks up, sudden, and he moves up while watching some unnamed thing in the distance, leaving Keith, leaving him. Tightness constricts Keith’s chest and worms its way up his throat.

“Shiro,” he tries, and slides his dagger away to twist toward him, “e-end simulation- _Shiro_ -”

Sendak roars with triumph. “This is one nightmare _you’ll never outrun!"_

Blaring castle alarms jolt him from the mindscape. Keith snaps the headset in halves and throws them across the room, shoulder swinging hard enough to pop joints and crack something high in his back. He shoves his hands into his hair and hyperventilates. There isn’t time for it. There’s never a time for it, but the team rushes around him in a frenzy, babbling on about homicidal goo and self-opening airlocks and a pod just ejecting from the lower quadrant of the castle, and he forces himself at a stagger to his feet on a half-formed question about Shiro that none of them know how to answer. Pidge and Allura are also conspicuously absent.

Keith runs.

He always, always runs- but this time it isn’t away from something. It's toward someone. Shiro stumbles through an explanation just before a wormhole alert blares overhead in a blaze of red. The team scrambles to get to the deck, and Keith is demanding answers before the doors are even open because they may have lost Sendak, but the Castle is infected with this crystal and Allura must be trying to slow their descent somehow-

“Allura!” He skids short of the platform. She’s relaxed beside the controls. “What’s going on?”

“We’re going to Altea,” the princess says, trancelike, and Keith knows something else must be wrong. “We’re going home.”

Alfor’s face glitches across the screens as they approach, sends the team jerking back in shock from his shouting, defensive in rage. Hunk begins to worry nonsensically as they start talking over themselves- Lance about haunted Castles, Pidge about killer viruses and Keith about putting a sword through the nearest control panel. Shiro continues trying to snap the Princess awake. Coran does similarly before he gasps and realizes, “the crystal must have corrupted Alfor’s artificial intelligence! Sendak was tapping into it over the comms, but now that he’s been shot into space- it’s taking over!” The screens blaze red with the burn of a dying star.

Allura comes to, shocked out of the confines of the controls upon attempting to set the course right and Alfor turns his back, cold. “Father, please!” She raises her voice and the team watches, helpless against the seizure of power. “I beg you to turn this ship around- if we don’t do it soon, we will all perish!”

“I know,” Alfor says, and Keith’s breath freezes in his lungs, “that is my intention.” He’s not just trying to destroy the Castle- he’s trying to destroy the _team_.

" _Why_?” demands Allura.

“Zarkon can never be defeated,” Alfor insists. Pain blooms again behind Keith’s temples but this is just an AI, this is just a malfunction gone too far, turned against the Paladins and what they stand for. They can fight _this_ , they can find a solution for this, but- “-fight for what?” he asks Allura after more protest, softer. “It is all over for Altea.” Something sharp stings through Keith’s chest. “...you don’t have to live a lifetime of war.”

_Apathy_ , he grits through clenched teeth when his boots smack the ground to his Lion, repeats like a chant while the team converges outside the Castle. They slam their strength against protesting metal, battle heat, the harsh pull of a looming star that collapses in on itself. Apathy, Keith thinks, will take the strongest of them down, given time and pain and _grief_ and after the resolved encounter he watches the team -his _teammates_ \- compliment each other, relieved, and he decides that there will be hell to pay when it comes for him again. Maybe they don’t need him beyond the flight and the fight, but it’s hard to say when he’s got three pairs of arms around him and enthusiastic suggestions to reconvene in the kitchen for snacks ringing through the halls around. Keith has just remembered that there’s a difference between need and want when Shiro agrees to the others’ plans.

He’s quiet.

Keith aches to know what’s going on in his head.

 

 

 

Shiro’s unharmed when all is said and done. He twists his hands and follows the team to the kitchen, all still a little shaken, but in better spirits and louder conversation now that the crystal has gone dormant again and been ejected from the ship just in case. Pidge sighs every so often between sentences about lost data and unfinished tests, but she smiles when Hunk burps and tells everyone that he’s never eating food goo again. They did alright, Shiro decides, and can’t help but thump Lance’s back when the two pass an airlock. The grin he gets in return is only faintly dimmed by weariness.

“...wait, what do you mean, the computer had Sendak’s voice?” Keith’s inquisitive exhaustion comes hoarse, like he’d been shouting at the bot before it deactivated. The image grieves Shiro, but then, the image of any of them in danger is enough to do that tenfold. “It was Alfor’s AI doing the talking, wasn’t it?”

“Eh, I guess it doesn’t matter in the end, but some of Sendak’s files bled into the main comms and merged with Alfor’s signature. That’s why Sendak’s corrupted code disappeared when Shiro and I ejected him from downstairs- but before then, he could’ve popped up as a hologram almost anywhere, yikes. Why? You see the holodeck do anything funky earlier?” Shiro almost hears the squint and scrunched nose in her voice. He doesn’t catch Keith’s answer or whether there’s one at all once they’ve come to the kitchen, feet faltering far before the doors, something horribly guilty taking hold of the rhythm beneath his sternum- and he stays put as the others go on ahead, but by the time Keith has noticed him lagging behind, there’s not a single offer of comfort forming in the back of his mind. It’s just the drive to it and the muscle memory that has him reaching out once the pilot in question approaches.

He’s never one to back down from a potential conflict. It’s part of what makes Shiro wish they could just skip the mental dilemma and leave it alone, but it’s also part of what makes Shiro break. “Hey. You didn’t exactly say what happened with the training deck, but if Sendak did anything, hurt you-”

“He wanted me to kill you.” There’s something to be said for delivery, but Keith’s bluntness is a heart attack on its own. “Tried to get inside my head, you know. Make me turn against the team.”

It’s truly awful that Shiro feels relief.

“Me too,” he admits, unsteady in more ways than one. “The team- and you, I mean. Everyone.”

“Yourself?”

Shiro doesn’t answer that. He closes his free hand into a fist and winces when the prosthetic adds emphasis, and closes his jaw without thinking. Fight or flight hasn’t been an immediate reaction in a while, so when Keith steps closer and he wants to draw back, and hates his own guts, he knows it’s that much more important to be steady. “If Sendak hurt you,” he starts again, harder.

“Shiro,” Keith interrupts. His hands open and close loosely at his sides. “Nothing- _none_ of this was your fault. What is it with you and being scared for everyone but yourself?”

Shiro takes a breath. “You say that like I don’t have a handle on my priorities, Kogane.”

It hits a tender spot. Keith’s face goes hard and closed off, he looks away, then folds his arms across his chest. Shiro still has a grip on his shoulder. He gives a quick, mental wince. “Keith- I didn’t mean-” No good. He thinks back to the hands on his face last night, the rare glimpse of bare worry across Keith’s face and calls it a lost cause- maybe more for himself than the younger. “Look, it’s late, we... you need sleep-”

“I need a fight,” Keith says, low like he’s hurt and hates it, quick like he’s ripping a bandaid off, “it’s why I’m _here_. The team- they need-” His fingers tighten. His sleeves wrinkle. “They need a leader, not a martyr.” His perception is second only to Sendak’s, but context is everything and there’s a hidden and _not me_ buried underneath it all. “Just don’t be a martyr, Shiro.” He closes his mouth like he hadn’t meant to say so much, eyes flitting across Shiro’s face, silence stretching, brows lowering. He studies him like he’s finding some familiarity about the crisis and he shouldn’t; the memory of nearly being a married man feels like a future from another life, one where war didn’t sweep Shiro’s feet out from under him and replace both with stone blocks while the water rushed in, suffocated, forced him to look his own impermanence in the eye and ask _what now?_ Shiro can’t look at Keith without seeing the devastating mortality of them both.

His mouth loses the hard edge and his brows ease up, eyes round and unguarded when Shiro cups his cheek with his free hand, the metal one. He holds Shiro’s elbow but doesn’t push him away. It’s part of the apology he can’t form in words- Shiro wanted to believe that Keith needed protecting, that Keith needs protecting from _him_ or that he’d be crushed by this fight without a team- but Keith _is_ the fight, the fire, so much more. Shiro doesn’t want to lose him. It’s that simple until Keith’s breath hitches, and he knows he’s only being half honest.

Their heads brush. Keith’s nose is cold against his cheek. Shiro brings his other hand up to slide into his hair, and aches with a want he thought he’d never feel again after- _after_ , and starts at the knuckles Keith brushes over the left side of his chest. His head feels hazy in a good way. Keith draws back and he’s still swaying on his feet.

“Get some sleep,” Keith says. There’s a promise in the way his brows are tilted, lips parted, but Shiro doesn’t ask when he nods. “I’ll keep an eye on the others.” The corner of his mouth tilts up. Shiro mimics the smile unconsciously and lets his hand slip out of grasp, and watches him turn away, and can’t chastise himself for lingering.

He can’t stop himself from wanting, either.


End file.
